Vents Installed

Yesterday I painted the vent assemblies. First primed with Stewart EkoPrime then Smoke Grey EkoCrylic like the rest of the cockpit. I elected to brush it on vs getting out the spray gun. I knew the paint quality would suffer but I reasoned since the vent assemblies are completely hidden underneath the panel it really wouldn't matter. My desire to get the vents installed and finished outweighed the hassle and time factor of setting up the gun, compressor and doing what was needed to prevent overspray from nuking my garage. As expected, there were brush marks, but I was able improve the look considerably by wet sanding everything with 1000/1500/2000 grit paper. There are many interior parts left like the seats, access covers, rollbar etc. that will need be spray painted since they are all highly visible components. I got the vents bolted together and sealed with clear RTV then bonded and clamped into place with more RTV. Fortunately, I'd thought through how to clamp everything ahead of time. It took 3 hands to keep everything aligned and get the clamps installed.

I'm also getting serious with SteinAir about the design of my panel. I went with SteinAir because I've been impressed with their customer service and their relationship with Vans. I decided to have a custom panel built by them with all avionics integrated and tested. Not the cheapest option for sure. But dealing with avionics and all the wiring harnesses is something I'd prefer not to do. I need it to work reliably from the beginning and I think this is the best way to do it. Not to mention the time savings. There are many expensive choices to be made such as the type of panel switches: toggle vs rocker, stick grip functionality, lighting, etc. It's made harder since I have little GA experience with glass panels to draw on.